Ben, a friend of mine, still holds a very sentimental attachment to his previous job, even though he quit it some nine years ago.

And it’s really not that he would one day want to go back to that job. If anything, he threw in the towel on his own accord, and for the same reason that most people do leave their jobs; he was unhappy with the wages he took home at the end of every month of toiling for his master.

So why the emotional attachment then? Well, Ben’s job might not have amounted to much by way of remuneration, but my friend always had one consolation to fall back to.

Ben’s employer had some good policies with regards to employee leave, so much so that for a very long time, this made up for the relatively little pay that eventually set him searching for greener pastures. The company he worked for had a policy that stipulated a leave allowance that amounted to 30 per cent of an employee’s monthly salary.

So assuming that our friend earned a monthly salary of Rwf 1.5 million, he was automatically entitled to Rwf 450,000 upon taking his leave. Not a bad deal, right?

With such a huge incentive, who then would not be looking forward to their annual or biennial work leave?

And wouldn’t the world of salaried employment be a better place indeed if all employers were like Ben’s?

Sadly, the reality on the ground is far from this.

In my lackluster life and years in the world of corporate employment, I have met very few (if any) employers like Ben’s.

It’s for this reason that for all the organisations I’ve worked for so far, I’ve always encountered this peculiar breed of co-worker.

We are talking about those people that literally have to be forced to take leave – voluntary leave; people that will frequently pop up at the workplace "just to check on colleagues” or to browse their email accounts even when they do have phones that are internet-enabled.

Such people be like, ‘why be away from work when one is broke? Why not stay put on the job instead?’ So they decide to linger around the office.

But money (or the lack thereof) is not the only issue that determines employee attitudes toward leave. The other consideration has got to do with issues of job security (or insecurity) in this case. Because the ordinary employee loves to toy with the notion that they are indispensable at the very most, and very important for the survival of their organisation at the very least, the prospect of taking leave then becomes a scary notion.

Scary because, naturally when you are away from work, another set of hands will be brought in to stand in for you. And the mere fact that someone stood in for you for two, three, four weeks is proof enough that, like anybody else, you are very replaceable.